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West must change approach to Africa
Tom Cargill, Assistant Head of the Africa Programme at Chatham House, writes on the West’s relationship with Africa:
French President Nicholas Sarkozy put it best this week, when he spoke of the increasing important of Africa in Global Affairs: “Africa’s formidable demographics and its considerable resources make it the main reservoir for world economic growth in the decades to come.”
This is indeed the principal finding of our new Chatham House Report ‘Our Common Strategic Interests: Africa’s role in the post G8 World’. Yet so far there is very little evidence that Western policy makers, publics, or most importantly, businesses, are waking up to the opportunities that are slowly draining away from them with each passing day.
For the past ten years, fundamental change has been taking place across large parts of Africa. Growth rates and stability have increased. Political, regulatory and security reform have deepened. Increasing investment from China, but also Brazil, India, Turkey, South Korea, Argentina and other ambitious emerging powers has acted for the most part as an accelerant.
Even the global financial crisis has in some ways hastened this process, for while in the short and medium term it had a devastating impact on millions across Africa, it has also revealed the true ebb of power from East to West, and encouraged the new economic actors of the G20 to chase access to the 40 percent of the world’s mineral resources, and 1 billion consumers gathered in Africa. Almost as important is the 25 percent of UN General Assembly votes that are represented by the continent’s 53 countries.
Meanwhile, many Western countries seem trapped in a humanitarian conception of Africa.
Popular media coverage and policy judgement is overwhelmed with a perception that Africa is simply a problem continent with little strategic value, except as a space where largess is shown and good things done to make up in some small way for the messy reality of international diplomacy.
Is Obama Africa’s saviour?
Africa is rich in natural resources like oil, gold, diamonds, platinum and yet millions of African people live in abject poverty. The global economic and climate crisis have made life even harder.
At the recent G8 meeting in Italy, African leaders and members of civil society voiced concerns over the promises made in previous G8 meetings of aid and assistance that have yet to materialise.
Obama’s message about Africa depresses me; he is very likely the American President the most literate in African issues ever, yet he recycles mantras from the Bush and previous regimes. Change? Hardly.He may have gotten his Harvard Law degree, but perhaps he could have taken a history course or two. Barack Obama doesn’t care about black people: http://aglobalhistory.wordpress.com/2009 /07/26/barack-obama-doesnt-care-about-b lack-people-africa-and-the-results-of-hi storic-myopia/
How has the G8 delivered on its Africa Action Plan?
This week’s G8 summit in Japan marks 6 years since the group of the world’s top industrial nations adopted a comprehensive action plan to support initiatives to spur the development of Africa. The G8 Africa Action Plan adopted at a summit in Kananaskis, Canada, in 2002 was seen as the biggest boost to Africa’s own home-grown development initiative, the New Partnership for Africa’s Development, NEPAD. The G8 Plan pledges to help Africa tackle the main obstacles to its development — from promoting peace and security, to boosting trade and implementing debt relief to expanding education, health facilities and fighting HIV/AIDS.
As a followup to the Action Plan, the G8 at its 2005 summit in Scotland agreed to double aid by 2010 to $50 billion, half of which would go to Africa. But as G8 leaders prepared for this year’s summit in Japan, the Africa Progress Panel set up to monitor implementation of the 2005 commitments issued a gloomy report last month. It said under current spending the G8 would fall $40 billion short of its target. Other aid agency officials accused the G8 of backtracking on its pledges to Africa.
But some analysts argue that agreements reached at the 2005 summit were just a part of the G8 Africa Action Plan which offers a far more comprehensive framework for dealing with the continent’s problems. Britain under Prime Minister Tony Blair played a leading role in placing Africa’s problems at the top of the G8 agenda. The UK progress report details London’s implementation of the G8 Action Plan including its role as lead international partner in Sierra Leone after helping to end civil war in the former colony in 2002. US President George W. Bush has won praise in Africa for commiting more of the administrations’s resources to Africa’s war against HIV/AIDS.
But overall, has the G8 kept faith with Africa in the implementation of the Africa Action Plan? How have the decisions of the G8 helped your country or your personal life? Has NEPAD shown enough capacity to keep the G8 focused on its pledges? Is the G8 likely to switch its focus from Africa to more pressing global issues like soaring oil prices and the threat of inflation and recession in its own member countries? Have your say.
This kind of discussion about western aid is not new. Africa needs strong leadership not reliant on aid. The donor has no obligation to give aid and if they do then they decide how they want that aid used. The beneficiary are free to negotiate the best deal for their particular situation (strong leadreship). Political sysytems of governance in Africa are little understood and Africans must negotiate suitable economic packages and exploit the intellectual resource capital so many have invested in. We must participate as global partners using our vast natural resource base. In fact, Africans with functional economic trading blocs will go a long way before there is a need for western money. The AU, SADCC, ECOWAS and several regional blocs are almost non-functional well into the 21st century. Where is the strong leadership. Kwame Nkrumah had brilliant ideas about African integration but we continue to fight and fail to hold elections, fail to eradicate malaria etc. If we put our house in order, we can solve a lot of problems and dont tell me that Africans are very diverse because so is Europe and they have a powerful EU etc.
Does Africa need aid?
Rich countries look set to fall roughly $40 billion short of the amount they had pledged to give to Africa by 2010. So says a report released on Monday by the panel set up to monitor commitments made amid much fanfare at the Group of Eight summit in 2005.
The panel said G8 countries were not keeping their promises at the very moment rising food prices threaten to increase hunger and child mortality. The report also calls for a rethink of trade policies to help African countries and urges rich nations to spend more on renewable energy sources there.
But how important is aid for Africa?
Africa’s economies have been growing at their fastest in decades — the International Monetary Fund estimates African growth at well over 6 percent in 2007 and expects similar this year.
Not so long ago, net private capital flows to Africa were negligible or even negative.
But investment has soared, with China leading a rush to develop sources of raw materials. Globally, investors have been looking at Africa more seriously in the hope of potentially higher returns than in more developed markets that now face uncertainty.
africa needs to be left alone..we dont need people who come in terms of helping us and they are here entirely on self interest only!!!!!!
Tom, enough cannot be said about the Western Media’s role including your own organization in portraying Africa the way most Westerners still perceive it. But that’s their lost because Europe isn’t resource rich and they’ll wake up when it finally hits their pockets. Hopefully it won’t be too late by then. Until recently it hadn’t occurred to me that it’s the media’s business model which drives its reporting not only in Africa, but everywhere else. Most people, by nature, are attracted to negative news and for centuries Africa offered an easy lay-up. It’s not just the news media, it’s the other types of media (movies, cartoons, books, etc…). Western scientists and researchers have gone a great length to try to demonstrate that Africa doesn’t have a past like other people. The way it’s people were treated and continue to be speaks for itself. McKinsey’s June Quaterly offers an unprecedented insight into this new Africa you are attempting to make wake us up to – that’s been rising under the radar. In 2 weeks time, Africa will host the World’s biggest game, Soccer. Let’s see which Africa the media will show the world.